Nick Cave returning to Scotland for biggest Glasgow show yet

Darin Hutson

Australian rock star Nick Cave is returning to Glasgow in September for one of only five UK dates to give songs from his latest album, last year’s Skeleton Tree, an airing on stage.

His show at the SSE Hydro on Wednesday, September 27, is his first ever at the 13,000-capacity venue and his first in the city since a solo date at its Royal Concert Hall in 2015. It’s also his first Glasgow gig with his backing band the Bad Seeds since a visit to Barrowland in 2013 to promote that year’s Push the Sky Away album.

Push the Sky Away, his 15th studio album, had given Cave his biggest UK hit thus far at the time of that last Barrowland show, having reached No 3, but its follow-up, Skeleton Tree, went one better following its release in September, reaching No 2, as well as making it to No 27 in the US.

Cave’s two most recent albums are among four of his to make the top 10 here – their predecessors being Murder Ballads, a No 8 in 1996, and Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, a No 4 in 2008 – and he’s also had one top 20 single, Where the Wild Roses Grow, his 1996 duet with Kylie Minogue, having made it to No 11.

The 59-year-old’s SSE Hydro date is his only Scottish one on his upcoming UK tour, his other shows being in Bournemouth, Manchester, Nottingham and London.

Tickets, priced £45.40 to £62.45, go on sale on Friday, February 17, though a pre-sale will start two days earlier. For details, go to www.thessehydro.com/events/detail/nick-cave-and-the-bad-seeds or www.nickcave.com

It will be his 13th show in the city, excluding a session filmed for TV in April 2001, following two with the Birthday Party at Night Moves in 1982; seven with the Bad Seeds, at the Pavilion Theatre in 1990, two at the Carling Academy in November 2004 and another in May 2008 and visits to Barrowland in May 1992, May 2001 and October 2013; a Barrowland gig with Grinderman in September 2010; and solo concerts at the Royal Concert Hall in April 2015 and Princes Street Gardens in August 1999.

“We’ve been in a strange place. I’m coming out and blinking into the light,” said Cave.

“It’s good to be playing again.”

Cave, born in Victoria in Australia but now living in Brighton in England, is also about to have One More Time With Feeling, a film directed by Andrew Dominik, about the making of Skeleton Tree, released on DVD and Blu-ray. It’s out on Friday, March 3.